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F. Y. I.

Q. About 30 years ago, as the Washington Market area in lower Manhattan was cleared for urban renewal, the city dismantled an early cast-iron building and stored the pieces. The building, an architectural gem as I recall, was to be re-erected at a future date. What became of it?

A. It was stolen.

James Bogardus, a pioneer in the design and construction of cast-iron buildings, built a group of stores for Edward H. Laing at Washington and Murray Streets in 1849. Using prefabricated cast-iron columns and panels, along with wooden spans and brick walls, Bogardus assembled the four-story structure in two months, an astonishing feat for the day.

The Laing Stores represented one of the earliest uses of curtain-wall construction using mass-produced, modular iron parts, and in a sense all skyscrapers are its grandchildren. Scheduled for demolition in 1967, the little building somehow survived on the site until 1971, when preservationists gingerly disassembled the facades, numbered the parts and stored them on a nearby vacant lot. The building was to be reassembled next to its original site, on the campus of the new Manhattan Community College.

In 1974, however, three men were discovered loading cast-iron panels from the Laing Stores onto a truck in a storage lot at Washington and Chambers Streets. Though 22 broken sections were later recovered in a Bronx junkyard, horrified city officials discovered that almost two-thirds of the facade had already been sold for scrap, at $90 a truckload. The remaining panels were immediately placed under lock and key.

A hybrid Laing building, combining original and recast components, was planned for the new South Street Seaport, but, incredibly, all the remaining pieces were stolen in 1977. A facsimile of the building, lacking a single molecule of the original, was built at Front and Fulton Streets in 1983. It remains intact.

Q. In the woods just west of the Old Putnam Trail in Van Cortlandt Park, near the Parade Ground, are 13 tall stone pillars standing in a row. What is or was their purpose?

A. Around 1900, it became clear to Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, owner of the New York Central Railroad, that his Grand Central Depot would have to be rebuilt. The city demanded that steam locomotives be replaced by electrified trains, and the depot on 42d Street was in perpetual expansion and rearrangement.

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Sometime before 1903, Vanderbilt arranged for several stone quarries to deliver some huge sample slabs, which were placed outdoors and exposed to the elements. The upper facade of the new Grand Central Terminal would be built with the type of stone that weathered the most handsomely. The slabs were set upright along what was then the New York Central Putnam line, which traveled through Van Cortlandt Park on its way to Boston.

Marianne Anderson, a spokeswoman for Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay Parks, said the second stone from the south, Bedford limestone from Indiana, was chosen for Grand Central Terminal, not for the beauty with which it aged, but because it could be transported cheaply on Vanderbilt's rails from the quarry to New York. The pillars have been painted battleship gray, she said, to cover the inevitable graffiti.

The Putnam Trail was created when the rails from the Putnam Line were pulled up in 1994. Remnants from the railway, including parts of a chain-link fence, are still evident along the route, which carried passengers until 1958.

The Urchins' Champion

Q. Whence comes the name Drumgoole, as in Drumgoole Road on Staten Island?

A. Born in Ireland in 1816, John C. Drumgoole was the champion and benefactor of New York City's thousands of street urchins, particularly homeless newsboys and bootblacks. Drumgoole was for many years a sexton and janitor at St. Mary's Church on Grand Street, where it was said that he let homeless children sleep in the basement. Ordained a priest at 53, he became chaplain for the St. Vincent's Home for Newsboys at 55 Warren Street and founded a newspaper called The Homeless Child.

In 1881 he founded the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin at 80 Lafayette Street, which provided beds for more than 2,000 homeless children. The mission later moved to the south shore of Staten Island, where it continues today. A bronze statue of Father Drumgoole stood at Great Jones and Lafayette Streets from 1894 until it was moved to Staten Island in 1921.